The Nanny Diaries

Summary

A 21-year-old New York University student becomes a nanny to a family on the Upper East Side who turns out to be the family from hell. The story of the journey of Annie Braddock, a young woman from a workingclass neighbourhood in New Jersey, struggling to understand her place in the world. Fresh out of college, she gets tremendous pressure from her nurse mother to find a respectable position in the business world although Annie would prefer to trade in her blackberry for an anthropologist's field diary. Through a serendipitous meeting, Annie ends up in the elite and ritualistic culture of Manhattan's Upper East Side--as remote from Annie's suburban New Jersey upbringing as life in an

Amazon tribal village. Choosing to duck out of real life, Annie accepts the position as a nanny for a wealthy family, referred to as simply "the X's." She quickly learns that life is not very rosy on the other side of the tax bracket, as she must cater to the every whim of Mrs. X and her precocious son Grayer, while attempting to avoid the formidable Mr. X. Life becomes even more complicated when Annie falls for a gorgeous Park Avenue Hottie, and she's forced to explore her identity as never before.

The HR Perspective:
This story highlights the tough battle many young graduates face when they graduate. Parents encourage them to take up jobs which they consider are better in terms of benefits and prospects, but these are not necessarily the jobs that the young graduates are best suited for. The issue is that these young people don’t yet know themselves and what career they should pursue. As HR professionals, we often face such confused young people and it is important that we help them to draw out their real talents and aptitudes in order to assess their suitability for the roles we offer. It is easy for us to turn such candidates down without truly understanding their potential. Thus, we often lose great opportunities and good talent.

Contributed by: Eugenia Papadopoulos-Ioannou